What I (should) have learned from dying

From all my experience with death... I mean, dye. And not hair dye. That's a different post for a different day. I'm talking about fabric. Tie-dye, RIT dye, Tulip dye, Dylon.
First, it does NOT pay to be lazy. Dye loses it's potency after the first few(20?) minutes. It probably starts to lose it immediately, so you can't mix the dye and save the left-overs for another day. If you do, you will be sorely disappointed in your results.
I had a beautiful white maternity dress that I made to wear to see Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat (starring Donny Osmond) when I was pregnant with Wade in 1996.
I put it on the other day and Landon says to me, as I fastened my Tallulahs pearls around my neck and buckled my sandals, "You getting marry?" Then I realized that I would wear the dress more often and it would make me happier for the next 3 weeks (until I have my 7th and final baby) if it were a happy fuschia instead of white. So I dug out my box of dye and pulled out two boxes of RIT "fuschia" which i mixed up in my big pan with hot water (oh, after i soaked the dress in a pan of "ash" dissolved in water). I put the dress in the water and when i started stirring, i realized that their version of fuschia was more like what i call magenta. not that magenta is bad, just that the color that Duncan brand Tulip dye is calling "tulip" is closer to what i envision as fuschia (my happy color). So i rinsed out the dress and dumped my last half a box of "tulip" in and dissolved it. Anyway, the dress turned out lovely, if not quite bright enough for my taste. I may dye it again... if i have time before little lolita is born (her name is not Lolita... it's just that Mike and i have serious naming issues and our short list is still 18 names long).
So then today, after I unpacked all my 0-3 month clothes to put in the nursery, I took my favorite receiving blanket from Landon's baby-hood in blue and brown polka-dots and wet it down (no ash... lazy), dissolved a box of RIT mauve, which i thought would mix with the blue to make a nice lavender (hah!) and dumped in the blanket ($$$)... only problem is that i didn't unfold it first (um... lazy?). I stirred it around on the stove (quick... lazy method) for about 30 minutes and then I thought, I'm just going to stick it in the sink and unfold it so I can stir it around a bit better. Well, the insides of the blanket were... still... blue, so I'm stirring and stirring and stirring, but remember what I said before about the potency of the dye?And the color variations are not because of lighting. So...off to Michael's to buy more dye... or maybe just to Sassy Babies to buy a more girly blanket for Lola (are you calling me lazy?).
Tune in next time for more about tie-dying and gestational diabetes and bows and bow boards. Because i still have 3 weeks in which to write about this stuff, right?